An insight - What is the 'IT' that made DayZ, DayZ and where do we go from here.

[Intactus 128]

This is a huge post/article/food for thought i wrote after seeing yesterdays H1Z1 livestream.
It's not about that thou, it's about DayZ and what makes it the DayZ we love and hate so much and how to improve from there. As much as it is about DayZ, it's also about games in general, or the mechanics that they are built upon and how they come in play in a game like DayZ.

This is obviously not meant for the TLDR people with four second attention span, but to those of you who do contemplate on things and wish to understand some of the games you play.

I've split this post using the spoiler tags to protect your brain from the wall of text and for better readability for those who couldn't care less for some of the topics.

Have you ever thought what is 'IT' in those games that you remember, that you play over and over again, that becomes icons for their categories?

Remember Doom?
How many times did you grind "Dead simple" or "Tricks and traps" just so you got a chance to kill those same hordes of enemies over and over again in the most creative possible way you could imagine?

Carmageddons?
How many times did you actually race through trying to finish first with as little mayhem as possible despite the fact it would yield the best results?

First Hitman game?
How much time did you spent just blasting away your foes to see them tumble down those stairs, off the balcony and down that hill?

First Grand theft auto?
Screw that mission! Then drive around aimlessly causing as much carnage as humanly possible!

Why are 'games' like Goat simulator so popular? BeamNG drive?

The correct answer: Mayhem. Destruction. The chance to set up and event and watch everything unfold taking in every explosion, crash, severed limb and all the detail the developers had managed to cram in there. The exact same reason why kids build sandcastles just to take them down minutes after or tip over that tower of blocks they just built.

That's normal. It's not some sick sadistic trait of mind. It's not about wanting to hurt anyone or about the gore per se. It's about fueling your imagination, creativity and establishing your own personal little game within the game with whatever tools have been given at your disposal. It's about feeling in control then going 'Fuck all!'.

That is why Games like that have an immense replay value.

What has this got to do with DayZ?
- Well, everything. Bear with me. Let's take another set of examples first. Immensely popular games with completely dirrerent mindset.

Super mario Bros, anyone?
There is but one way across that map. There is but one method. There is only the rules set to you by the dev, no ways around them. There is only yourself to beat? Why do you play it over and over again?

Gran turismo?
There are no plot or twists, there are no mayhem and gore. There's only you with your bunch of polygons trying to perfect that lap. Endless tweaking of those variables given to you and navigating through that track in most optimal way pushing the limits of your mind to cope with every bump, hairpin, and AI driver in your way. And for what? To beat your own record even with that .002 seconds.

In these games there are no spectacular death or crash animations. The environment doen't give a shit what you do. There are no joy to be gained for doing things other than intended. In these, classical type of games you follow a boardgame mindset. You have the rules that make up the game. Then you win using your imagination differently. Not by bending the rules or ignoring them, but by thiriving despite of the rules given. Taking advantage of the rules. Surviving the rules. You strive for that perfection that you never achieve. Like athletes striving for that perfection in what they are doing.

That is why Games like that have an immense replay value.

Now let's take a look at what is 'IT' that makes Dayz, DayZ.

DayZ has it's roots in arma, which in turn has it's roots in Real Virtuality engine, a virtual battlefield designed for actual soldiers to train in. That's a TOOL, not a game. It's meant for very diciplined training, not goofing around trying to set shit on fire for the giggles. I've once seen soldiers training with it and it's far from 'gaming'. There's no need or purpose for spectacular effects, visuals, or other gimmicks. Only the variables and mechanics RELEVANT to the training are present.

It's like: "Who the fuck cares if that fence splinters with havoc physics and hollywood effects, the point is you hit it with a vehicle and now you've ruined your wheela and fence no longer gives cover!"
It's only the result what matters.

The reason why Arma stands at the very top of military games is the fact that it's so much tied to it's Training tool roots. People can utilize their knowledge of the real worlds rules. The realistic scale of time in what humans react, Weapons work, vehicles move, things happen. For gaming perspective it's slow and sluggish and cumbersome but from Simulation standpoint, it's realistic. People are able to confront things at a pace they happen in real life. At a pace they have been trained to react, think and act irl.

That is why military people are good at arma games and korean kids at Battlefield games.

Enter DayZ mod: The realistic approach from rigid milsim with real world ruleset, and the freedom to do whatever you want in a well crafted world populated by other real people. Nobody had ever done it before. No other game has yet done it. No other game WILL NOT do it in near future. Why?

What other games do are, well, games. Games with gamey feel, gamey looks, gamey mechanics, gamey timing.

H1Z1, The first real competition/blatant ripoff?
I'd go as far as saying that it's the 'Game' version of Dayzmod. There's nothing wrong with that; good games are very popular, but it's not what Dayz mod was, i'm afraid.

No soldier, police officer or human can bring in and utilize their real life expertize in dealing with hostile situation as things go down in a lot more 'gamey' timespace. Enemy moves, reacts, aims, returns fire, and makes desicions well beyond the timeframe they have been trained to work in.

When people say that despite all the shitty bugs, glitchy mechanics and all DayZ has "IT" in it that no other game has, it's the fact that it's so close to what we are used to in real life. Desicion making, reaction times etc happen at familiar, natural pace.

By limiting YOUR movements with that laggy aiming, slow vaulting and unresponsive movements it is providing your opponent that real life response he's been trained to work with.

For example, Dayzmod: When a trained person encounters a player it's very clear if he's a threat or not. He feels totally comfortable chatting with you if you have your back turned or weapon lowered. He knows for a fact that normal human reaction time combined with the time it takes one to raise the barrel and open fire is more then enough to step left from centerline and put three bullets into him.

Standalone took this away (Latest exp.) by modifying the mouse movement to 'gamey'. Now your enemy can easily spin around and shoot you in the dome using a reaction they learned playing a GAME. Your knowledge of average human reaction times, training of dealing with hostile individual and drilled in thoughtprocess of assessing the situation mean next to NOTHING now.

Even if you don't realize it right now, modifying DayZ to handle more like a 'Game' is all chipping away from 'IT' that makes it the game you love.

It's probably a small percent of people with actual training that constitutes as DayZ playerbase but it has nothing to do with anything above. It just means that majority of playerbase does not understand the beauty of current mechanics, since they don't have a clue how things supposedly go down in reality.
They are actually digging the dirt under their own feet and bringing DayZ closer to it's rivals with their uninformed, ill-educated demands of changing this and that.

The times i've seen people dissing the 'casuals' while in the next post demanding to take down some of the very core pillars of DayZ that sets them apart from that 'casual game' they so much hate.

Now, how to sell another 1.8 million copies of DayZ?

We have now established some sort of understanding of what makes different kind of games become iconic when thay get the formula right. We have some basic understanding of what made DayZ stand out when it came into picture. We have some understanding of the magic that made Dayz mod the game it is.

Now, how about we take one part of strict rules known as reality, one part of fuel for imagination known as freedom, stick'em in a Michael Bay for a spin and spread across our tasty apocalypse.
Let's set the fucking stardard for open world games now that we're at it:

Leave the milsim roots untouched. That's the core what makes DayZ stand apart from competition. Realism. That's what you are good at Bohemia! Do what your're good at! No other game studio comes even close regarding the authenticity of armed combat. DayZ needs all the authenticity it can have.
It needs to limit us in order to provide natural environment that behaves like the real world. Natural humans that act like natural humans, instead of some soulless counterstrike bots. I know when that other dude is hesitating, i know when hes about to pounce me and i know if a player heading to somewhere or fleeing from something. I know this because of the way our characters work in arma. No other game can accomplish this. Don't take it away.

Now add modern day mechanics. Games in this decade has physics. I know you are at it and that's a good thing. Ragdolls and all but you need to fully realize that simply stating that "fence is broken, wheel is broken" isn't just gonna cut it. People drool for that carmageddon shit. Mayhem, chaos and lots of debris in the process. We want to shoot the tire off that speeding suv and really, really feel that we have accomplished something huge as we watch it spin off the road, flip while going through that tree spewing a lifeless human out of the side window before slamming into a building taking down everything in it's way.

Make guns deadly. Why people play gungames? To feel in control, powerful, invincible!
Make it back like it was in Arma. Make sure that every weapon in game feels like a proper weapon. Every weapon is deadly. Every weapon feels like a personal safe haven when you got one in your hands.
People get just angry duelling with ineffective weapons, yet love the thrill duelling with mosins. Make every weapon command respect!

Rewrite the shaders completely. Really. It's 2014. You have absolutely beautiful models, textures, terrain, landscape, hell everything but you choose to present it in the wort possible way. Things look awful in clean studio lighting. We need atmosphere and contrast, volumetric light effects, fog, cast shadows, proper light textures and all that. Make it atmospheric. In here, toss away the milsim and enter cinematography. Enter horror movies and resident evil and make it more gamey. Shit needs to LOOK like a movie, but behave like reality.

Focus on what people want to focus in, not the other way around. Nobody gives a shit just how complicated their health and injury system is as long as the weapons aren't as complicated and multifaceted in comparison. It just pisses everyone off. Weapons should be treated with absolutely the same detail, realism and care as our characters. Our weapons define our characters in this game. It's the weapons that should have all those complex mechanics, parts, stats and variables instead of our characters at this point, not the other way around. The The fact that i can cause complex and possibly irreversible damge to another player with a weapon should mean that this weapon represents equaly complicated, challenging and multifaceted part of the gameplay.

Same with the vehicles. If you have a crazy complex system to get one running and to maintain it, you should have equally complex system to tweak and better your vehicle once it's in working order. The rule of thumb would be that each part and variable you need to fix it, should have an enhancement or optional variable you can adjust to make it better once it's running. Otherwise it's gonna be like Lada's in the mod: Not worth the trouble. If you already have vehicle part system of any kind, it's next to no effort to expand from there. Give me abitity to turn that pale husk of a lada into a crazy madmax death on wheels.

Now how's that? Do you Agree or disagree? Personally i'd skullfuck that game to death.

They already have all the tools to do everything depicted above. It's all there.
If they get it right, im positive that we have one of the all-time icons of videogaming history in the making here.


What would you do differently?
Do you see the whole DayZ in some entirely different way?
Could DayZ be DayZ on some completely different engine?
What do YOU expect from the finished product?
What is the unique feature that made YOU play the shit out of YOUR favorite game?

(Oh, and thank you for your time reading it all if you did.)

 

[Irish. 4886]

I even tried skimming and got all "too many letters and words"-bobulated. 

 

I think maybe post this on Reddit. Its so expansive, it needs moar internet

[crazykilla420 11]

WAIT there was a H1Z1 stream yesterday? When is the next one? I didn't know they were streaming it! How does it look? <3

[Intactus 128]

As a sidenote: It might be that i view many things very differently than big part of our playerbase.

I have worked on few mods for Stalker/Skyrim/Dragon Age and been part of few lesser commercial games so i believe to have some sort of understanding of how things are put together and how it all works. (Mind you i do zero coding, just tex/modelling/general graphic and gameplay design.)

I also hold an army officer rank, and with it i've had my share of all that drilling and things they teach there.
It affects largely how i play, feel and think about DayZ and it's sibling, Arma.

I have zero interest in other military/fps games out there since what they provide is so far from the actual things that happen in reality.
I view DayZ and it's interactions way more like a game of chess than a shooting/action game. :D
(And i do enjoy a good game of chess...)



 

Edited April 18, 2014 by Intactus

[silvatos 50]

WAIT there was a H1Z1 stream yesterday? When is the next one? I didn't know they were streaming it! How does it look? <3

Kill yourself. You smell like mayonnaise.

Edited April 18, 2014 by orlok
No. Dont insult people.

[crazykilla420 11]

Kill yourself. You smell like mayonnaise.

Kill yourself you try to be funny by acting like you are a person on tv that is a terrible person do as he should do and kill yourself self reason you are a waste of breath and wasting human needs of water and food and all you produce is shit so do the world a favor and eat bullet sir or don't waste the bullet please. Make a noose and hang your self we can get the rope back.

Edited April 18, 2014 by orlok
Dont break rules to combat rule breakers

[Irish. 4886]

Kill yourself. You smell like mayonnaise.

I mean you're being a dick.. but at least its a funny dick. Beans! ;)

Edited April 18, 2014 by orlok
not amusing

[Intactus 128]

Kill yourself you try to be funny by acting like you are a person on tv that is a terrible person do as he should do and kill yourself self reason you are a waste of breath and wasting human needs of water and food and all you produce is shit so do the world a favor and eat bullet sir or don't waste the bullet please. Make a noose and hang your self we can get the rope back.

Here, go watch them cartoons and stop throwing toys around. >:(

 

[crazykilla420 11]

Here, go watch them cartoons and stop throwing toys around. > :(

 

Thanks bro ill watch it when i get home thank you <3

[OrLoK 16185]

Hello there

 

I think the thing that makes DAYZ is the RV engine and as was pointed out its simmness.

 

Back in the day 90pc of PC games were sims or solo rpgs, with huge manuals and billions of commands to learn.

 

It wasnt user friendly but the games on the whole were so DEEP.

 

Now we tend to find PC games are beomiong more consolian, which is not a bad thing, but for me it misses out on the whole reason of having a PC.

 

If i want a console game, ill buy a console.

 

I want PC games. I have a PC

 

Arma/VBS/DAYZ are/is a PC game/sim/game.

 

Not all users want a simplified easy game to play and are not into killstreaks.

 

There is room for both simple games and complex sims, if you make them we will buy them. I suppose the profit margin isnt there though.

 

Rdgs

 

LoK

[OrLoK 16185]

Kill yourself. You smell like mayonnaise.

We dont say things like this.

 

We also do not throw it back at people.

 

Be warned.

 

L

[pillock 850]

I agree completely with the general sentiment of your essay, I think.

However:

Having laggy, unresponsive controls is not the way to achieve human-like reaction times - it's just annoying - but player movement in general does need to be slowed right down. The ability to change direction so quickly on the run is especially unrealistic, frustrating and problematic. Melee fights are a complete farce. With the introduction of ragdoll physics, we need realistic momentum.

And I don't agree that weapon complexity is more important than the complexity of the health system. At all. I am the absolute polar opposite of this view. I want the guns to be effective and believable, but I highly doubt that anything approaching a majority of DayZ players have any real experience of firearms whatsoever - whereas we all have a lot of experience of things like fatigue, illness and injury. The health mechanics are something we can all relate to from real-world experience, and I'd like to see them take centre-stage in our decisions in-game, personally. This is what can set DayZ apart from the arcade shooters it will be competing with.

Edited April 18, 2014 by Pillock

[Intactus 128]

I agree completely with the general sentiment of your essay, I think.

However:

Having laggy, unresponsive controls is not the way to achieve human-like reaction times - it's just annoying - but player movement in general does need to be slowed right down. The ability to change direction so quickly on the run is especially unrealistic, frustrating and problematic. Melee fights are a complete farce. With the introduction of ragdoll physics, we need realistic momentum.

And I don't agree that weapon complexity is more important than the complexity of the health system. At all. I am the absolute polar opposite of this view. I want the guns to be effective and believable, but I highly doubt that anything approaching a majority of DayZ players have any real experience of firearms whatsoever - whereas we all have a lot of experience of things like fatigue, illness and injury. The health mechanics are something we can all relate to from real-world experience, and I'd like to see them take centre-stage in our decisions in-game, personally. This is what can set DayZ apart from the arcade shooters it will be competing with.

Thanks for the input, and sure, The current uncertain character mechanics need a ton of polish, but i think they still should stick to their roots with this one, not replace then with generic FPS mechanics as they did with current exp.

As for the weapon complexity: You might be right, maybe i'm too hung up on weapons and people certainly have more knowledge of themselves than any guns. Can't argue here.

Nevertheless i feel that the main gameplay mechanism for causing player injury, should pretty much match the mechanism of recovering from that injury.

Surely everyone can shoot a gun if it works but there should be a similar depth to them than there is to our character is all i'm saying.

(Also i get the feel that most players are way more hung up on how their mosin is kitted than how their char is doing.) :D

 

Like a crappy clone of DayZ with visible drops in frame rate and screen tearing, flat grass and next to no foliage, unrealistic instant stops when using the breaks of a jeep even when traveling downhill, building that look like they were ripped right from day Z, complete copies of gestures, the ability to crash into a fence and have it magically disappear and your car sustain no damage, and zombies that move like the hunchback of Notre Dame and pose less of a threat then the ones in day Z before a patch. Need I go on? 

 

Not to be a dick but that's kinda ignorant thing to say... What i got out from that stream is:

- H1Z1's got some serious Graphical mechanics working nicely that are sorely missed in dayz completely. H1Z1 right now can/could be ten times better looking than Dayz.

- They got some pretty rigid vehicle/charachter physics, ragdolling, terrain and environtment collisions going on even affecting vehicles center of gravity and acceleration and so forth. That one bush/fence does not hinder the fact that otherwise the car was behaving in consistent, predictable and realistic way thanks to decent physics.

- Regarding the map: It's reasonable to assume that what they have as a "testing ground" is some barebones, early snapshot of the map in development with all functioning shit just slapped into it for internal playtesting. That's safe way to test shit in a functioning world that mapmakers etc. are not modifying constantly and complicating the task of figuring out other issues...

The thing that you Should be looking is the potential. The mechanics of how they generate those nice/bad graphics, physics and mechanics.

Overall i'd say that they have a good solid base right there, but the overall design was something between Rust and Farcry (Or Warz?... Never tried that one).

 

 

[gibonez 3633]

I have no doubt in my mind that the "IT" in dayz mod was the mil sim gameplay and the pvp.

 

Zombies and player interaction had 0 effect in seling dayz to people.

[Intactus 128]

I have no doubt in my mind that the "IT" in dayz mod was the mil sim gameplay and the pvp.

 

Zombies and player interaction had 0 effect in seling dayz to people.

Surely zombies and player interaction were some part of the sales figures but i don't think it's that what carries DayZ. :rolleyes:

To add: Even I play it for the player interactions more than just for the kill.

9 times out of 10 i will catch up and initiate some interaction with a person i see or meet. That's how i set up my challenge for surviving people: Meeting them face to face or otherwise exposing myself as friendly before shots fired.

 

Edited April 18, 2014 by Intactus

[gibonez 3633]

Surely zombies and player interaction were some part of the sales figures but i don't think it's that what carries DayZ. :rolleyes:

To add: Even I play it for the player interactions more than just for the kill.

9 times out of 10 i will catch up and initiate some interaction with a person i see or meet. That's how i set up my challenge for surviving people: Meeting them face to face or otherwise exposing myself as friendly before shots fired.

 

 

 

Perhaps some sure.

 

However dayz was for many people their first experience at pvp within the huge map of chenarus all using fun realistic mil sim aspects and ballistics.

 

This was the main attraction.

[Intactus 128]

Agreed, C.O.Wolf.

It's a blatant gamey ripoff no matter how you look at it. Will it be success? Who knows.

It's no realistic hardcore survival game as i see it but it does have a lot of things in more solid footing than DayZ has atm. with lot less development time spent.
Technically, i can't but wonder how the people at Bohemia are justifying their cumbersome, outdated mechanics in a game they are developing in this year right here when there's clear competition going past left and right. =)
 

[ptk (DayZ) 178]

Everyone here should already know what makes Dayz. IT is the fucking beans fellas, have some!

Edited April 18, 2014 by ptk

[gibonez 3633]

The reason these rip off games are being developed faster is because they don't have to worry about making their game realistic. They aren't making a simulator they are making a game. DayZ is really more of a simulator.

I like to think of it like this DayZ is Rome and these knock-offs or a village. And you know what they say, Rome wasn't built in a day.

 

The mod was a simulator ,stand alone is a clunky mess with terrible terrible gunplay and arcade mechanics.

 

Funny thing is in the h1z1 video they mentioned that the game is not going to be a twitch shooter and they will be adding mil sim gunplay. I will laugh my ass off if in the end h1z1 becomes more of a simulator than dayz does.

[Daemonkid 493]

On the topic about complex gun mechanics. I thought about a system that could be introduced to make a firearm more of a prize and harder to get. (They need to fix the dispersion first though)

But my idea was that, certain inside parts of the gun are required for the operation of the weapon. (Springs, ect) Which each have their own condition separate from the weapons condition.

So I find a worn M4. The internals are all damaged but 1 part. So I take that M4, i'm unable to fire because an important piece is broken, but I choose to run around with it just incase I find another M4 with parts that I could possibly swap out. It should require tools on your character to do certain tasks unless the parts in real life can be taken out and swapped with no tools.

 

That was my take on it, would make finding a gun in working order more work, and finding one at peak operating condition would be super extremely rare or you can put a gun together capable of operating at peak condition.

[Intactus 128]

Something along the lines Daemonkid right there...

A modern working firearm in good condition should be something like offroad vehcles or nvgs were in the mod.
A rare, useful luxury item you spent a lot of hard work to obtain.

Edited April 18, 2014 by Intactus